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Reviewed by Michael Aronson Like Hitler’s regime, the fourth volume of Adolf starts to fall apart as the war approaches its end. The various plotlines are brought to a near standstill to allow political developments to push the time frame ahead a few years. With a few key events, Toge seemingly abandons his quest to expose Hitler’s true background, and without the MacGuffin to propel him, his storyline falls apart. He clearly has one more service to fulfill in the series, but it’s somewhat obvious as soon as he settles into his new status quo. Adolf Kamil all but disappears from the series’ pages after the above key events, another hit to the series. Thankfully there’s still potential for the plotline of Adolf Kaufman, once a Hitler Youth trainee, now a respected (and feared) lieutenant in the SS. Though the other two suspense storylines petered out, now that Kaufman is nearly of age and works directly under Hitler, the question becomes whether or not he’s sensible enough to see Hitler’s dementia for what it really is, and, regardless of its recognition, how he’ll react to it. One of the coolest sequences of this volume is a long-distance trip by U-boat, and if Tezuka was still alive I’d learn Japanese just to pester him to create a new series strictly about submarine warfare. Naval-anything usually bores me to tears, but Adolf explores all the psychological ramifications of being trapped underwater in freezing oceans for a prolonged period of time. Coupled with the demons already plaguing one of the characters, this extended transition scene is exceptionally horrifying. I don’t have high hopes for the ending to Adolf. It’s likely that the entire cast with either have a large confrontation or a series of smaller ones, and this would be satisfying except there’s nothing more at stake. I mentioned at the outset the problem of knowing that Hitler’s heritage won’t be revealed worldwide in a historically-based work of fiction, and now it seems that problem is catching up with the larger story. Comment on this review of Adolf v4: Days of Infamy on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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